true ORIGINAL

Gemma Cruz Araneta on her life in Mexico, her reluctant foray in modeling, becoming a public servant and cultural advocate, and when she's writing her next great book.

- AUDREY CARPIO

Gemma Cruz Araneta is still turning heads in her eighth decade. Standing 5'10" with a coiffed silver mane, she is easily the tallest, and most striking person in the room. Her very presence commands respect, emanating a knowing dignity distilled from years of living a life that can be described as wide-ranging and far-reaching, even colorful. She grew up with the greats looking over her shoulders: Filiomena Francisco, the first Filipina pharmacist, her mother the writer Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, and her uncle the diplomat-historian Leon Maria Guerrero. She calls Jose Rizal her great grand uncle.

Hailing from a distinguished family of letters, it must have come as a surprise that Gemma Guerrero Cruz would make a name for herself as a beauty queen-a move that behooved her uncle Leon to send a cable from Spain to his sister Carmen with the message, "Basta de barbaridades!" (enough of this nonsense!)

But she wasn't just another pageant contestant, Cruz Araneta became the Philippines and Asia's first international title holder when she was crowned Miss International in 1964, in Long Beach, California. Back then, she was aware of how pageants were being used as a geopolitical tool. Considering what was going on at the time the United States of America was trying to shore up support for a war in Vietnam-it seemed that an Asian candidate would have a good chance of winning the title.